The graphical user interface (GUI) is information added to the screen which allows a player to interact with the world and to see their actions and the actions of others. There are three different types of information display; information overlays, permanent elements, and temporary windows and panels. Permanent elements on the screen display information to the user and allow mouse based interaction with the game. Temporary panels and windows are opened by the player and provide detailed information and more complex game actions. Overlay information allows the player to understand the game world, see the effects of their actions and the actions of others.

The game allows some customization of the permanent parts of the display such as altering the size but most cannot be moved. Temporary elements can be moved and resized.

All keyboard shortcuts provided in this article are the game defaults, see the article on keyboard controls to learn more about the keys provided for different actions.

All NPCs and players in the world can be highlighted to determine whether they are enemy or friendly, and to get basic information, such as name, guild, level, and role. Holding Left Ctrl displays names for nearby enemies, holding Left Alt displays information for friendlies. NPCs such as vendors, scouts or those with role in an event or personal story appear with an additional icon indicating their role even if they are not currently highlighted by the player.

Color of the information and character highlight is used to indicate the relationship to the player:

The currently selected target is marked with a small downwards pointing arrow above the head and a circle around the feet, both in the color of the relationship. A called target(Ctrl+T) gets a large red target reticule icon above their head.

Most skills are automatically targeted, while some are manually targeted as indicated by the target reticule around their skill number. Manually targeted skills need to be aimed at a location, at hostile or friendly target's location.

The skill bar indicates whether the target is out of range when a red bar appears under the skill.

The red health globe divides the skill bar in two halves and is a visual indicator of the character's current health relative to their maximum health. Your current health is also displayed as a white number at the center of the globe.

The endurance bar is the beige semicircle above the health globe. It shows how much endurance a character has available for dodging. A player is able to dodge twice without waiting for endurance regeneration, this is indicated by the line through the semicircle.

The weapon sets switch button (to the left of the skill bar) switches between the two active weapon sets. The feature is unlocked at Level 15, but is not available to elementalists or engineers, which have access to attunements and kits respectively.

After picking up an environmental weapon (or other non-weapon item) the weapon set switch changes to a drop icon. Clicking it drops the item and restores the currently equipped weapon (and skills).

The compass shows an overhead view of various features centered around the player character. Covered locations are hidden until they are revealed after the character travels nearby; this applies to underground and underwater passages. Zoomed in, the range of the compass is 2500 units, representing 63 meters/208 feet.[1] If pulled upwards it will attach itself to the top right of the screen (it can be moved back to the bottom right by dragging the dark bar that appears on the right of the compass when hovering over it).

Many of the compass icons will display a symbol next to it to show the relative altitude between it and the player character.

˄ = icon is above player character, symbol appears to the upper right of the icon

˅ = icon is below player character, symbol appears to the lower left of the icon

The altitude symbols appear when the player character icon is within a variable distance of the other icon. The player character icon must be within its diameter of a fallen ally to show the altitude marker while an Equipment Repair NPC altitude marker will be displayed at more than 10 player character icon diameters (PCID).

The compass shares much of its information and graphical markers with the larger map interface. In addition to the map icons shown on the normal map the compass also shows harvesting nodes.

— Ore

— Wood

— Plants

Holding down Shift allows a player to ping points or draw white lines on the compass, by clicking or dragging over it. Clicking on the compass while holding Alt will place a personal waypoint that displays an icon for the player and all party members, both on the compass and on the world map.

The target display is located in the top center of the screen and provides information about the currently selected enemy or ally. Displayed are the target's name, a portrait, current health, effects, level, rank, and abilities.

The experience bar starts on the left with the number of the character's current level. The bar fills towards the right side of the screen where the next level's number is situated. Once the bar fills to 100%, the character will advance to the next level. If the character level has been dynamically adjusted the effective level is bracketed and marked in green next to the actual level.

The chat box contains a history of chat that has taken place within a finite amount of time. By default, it is situated in the bottom left corner of the HUD. If pulled upwards it will attach itself to the top left of the screen.

The menu bar is located at the top left of the screen. It provides links to temporary panels which provide game information. Clicking each icon opens a panel, many of the panels also have a default keyboard shortcut. From left to right, the icons represent:

The menu bar is used to communicate some information. If action is required on the hero panel, such as allocating traits, a red exclamation mark is added to the icon. If the inventory is full it is surrounded by a red box . The number of unread mail messages is marked on the mail icon with a red number.

After joining a party, the party display appears on the top left and shows the avatars, health, professions, and levels of your party members. It also shows speech bubbles when party members send a chat message and effects currently on the party member.

The position of the permanent elements party display and chat box can be exchanged by holding the left mouse button on a specific spot on the chat box. The possible move is announced by display of a wireframe in the area of the party display, where the chat box might be moved to. Dragging the cursor to the location exchanges the elements. The same may be applied to compass and event assistant, where the compass holds the spot for exchanging them.

Players can interact with each other by right-clicking their name or portrait in the target display, a member of a party, contacts, guild panel, or chat. This will bring a dropdown list of actions that can be done with the player.

There are a set of actions always available to players:

Whisper - Whisper the target player in chat

Join Party - Requests a party invite, either joining a party or someone joining your party

Send Mail - Mail the target player a message

Add Friend - Add target player to your friends list

Guild Invite - Invite the target player to your guild if you have proper privileges

Block - Adds the target player to your block list, you will not see what they say in chat and they cannot contact you in any way.

To take a screenshot without GUI, either toggle the GUI with Control+Shift+H or press Control+Shift+Print screen for a single screenshot. This creates a normal quality JPEG. Stereoscopic (3D) screenshots can be created by assigning it to a keybind. The user may append "-bmp" to the command line to take all screenshots in the lossless bitmap format.